In particular: "RFC 805, "Computer Mail Meeting Notes," details a February 1982 meeting at which the decision was made to move to a “hierarchy of domains”. This new approach to host naming, described as the “Domain Naming Convention for Internet User Applications” was codified and introduced in August 1982 with the publication of RFC 819, by Zaw-Sing Su and Jon Postel.

RFC 819 provides the general outline of what would become the DNS, including the ideas of naming authorities, registrars, and iterative and recursive resolvers. RFC 819 states: The intent is that the Internet names be used to form a tree-structured administrative dependent, rather than a strictly topology dependent, hierarchy. RFC 819 also defined the first top-level domain, .ARPA, as “the set of organizations involved in the Internet system through the authority of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency".

While the basic architecture of the system has remained the same, the DNS has evolved enormously, both in its scale and functionality over these 30 years. More than 50 IETF specifications define various aspects of it. Many application protocols rely heavily on it, beyond simple name to address translation. It provided an inspiration and a platform for many applications, becoming a globally distributed, secure (if DNSSEC is used) and resilient database.

Its spread and accessibility is global, its support is ubiquitous. This makes the DNS so attractive when new protocols need to store globally accessible data. Examples range from support for specific applications, like e-mail (MX Resource Records), to more generic Resource Record Types used to convey information for multiple protocols (SRV and NAPTR Resource Records). But care should be taken, warned the IAB in 2009, providing guidance in their "Design Choices When Expanding the DNS."

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